Chapter 14
After Dallas’s fuck-off dismissal, Ellen shoots me one last glare before leaving.
I’m left standing there, stunned and speechless.
Not even a word of protest from my evil boss, and I’m kind of impressed.
Wow, he’s built.
Thank you, Jesus.
I don’t know why I’m thanking anyone. Nothing’s happening here except that the man I dreamed about last night—very intensely—has literally materialized out of thin air and is standing in my bar, looking like he stepped through time or off a movie set where men wear leather armor and you can’t quite tell if they’re heroes or villains but you don’t care because they’re dreamily hot with thick dark hair and inked, veined, muscular forearms.
He’s wearing jeans and an expensive-looking navy shirt with the sleeves rolled up that sets off the blue of his eyes.
Now that his hat is off, I can see that his hair is a dark, silky brown, thick and a little too long, barely touching his collar at the back.
I notice again that it’s got the slightest wave to it, flicking out even though it looks like he might have tried smoothing it into place.
This hint of unruliness somehow perfectly matches the tattoos on his hands, his forearm porn and his neck, which disappear under his shirt.
The combination of his ink, his muscles and his tan are just … shockingly tantalizing.
I want to trace those designs over his warm, hair-dusted skin with my fingers.
Whatever he’s successful at, he’s also got a darker side. My guess is that he’s a little bit twisted, in a good way. In a way that’s reminding me of how good he felt when he came to me in my dreams.
It’s easy to tell he’s got money. When you spend as much time studying and serving people as I have, at a guess, he’s got more than most. Maybe a lot more. But he’s the opposite of showy and I like this.
I’m adjusting to him in a way that’s connective. I’m not just clocking all the things about him that appeal to me, I’m feeling them. Absorbing them and getting used to them. Like he’s already mine.
I don’t know how to feel about this.
“Amelie Thibodeaux,” he says, with barely-amused awe. The deep, smoky rasp of his voice touches me … there. Where I dreamed he touched me, right before I came. The low pulse of my heartbeat warms me as my body remembers.
God. I’m getting wet. Like I could come again, very easily.
He knows my last name.
“You googled me.” I don’t know if I should feel flattered or offended.
“I googled the hotel.”
Ah. So he knows everything. The press wasn’t shy about opening the vein of my tragedies all over the internet and letting me bleed out for the world’s entertainment.
“Dallas Wilder,” he says, watching my eyes. “So we’re on equal footing.”
Something about the name is vaguely familiar, but I can’t recall why it might be.
The beat of silence isn’t empty at all. It’s filled with some unspoken agreement we’ve already decided on but haven’t yet defined the terms of.
We’re in this, I think we can both feel that, whether we want to be or not. Something about this feels bigger than us both. We have a power over each other that’s weaving itself around us.
The pull and the look of him is wildly magnetic—even though there’s danger here. I know I’ll go with him today, even if it might cost me my job. Because how many people do you meet who can give you your first orgasm without even being in the room?
What I don’t know yet is where this will lead me. Heaven, for at least part of it. Hell, maybe in equal measure. Because I already know, this is a man who could break me.
Good thing I’m already broken.
Either way, I’m not about to go quietly. “Equal footing would imply that you’ve also gone bankrupt. And you don’t have the look of a man who’s destitute.” I don’t say it like an accusation. My voice sounds lightly out of breath.
I’m about to accept a date with this gorgeous hunk who is, from where I’m standing, as close to physical perfection as anything gets. But it’s true that he’s being very presumptuous with the little stunt he just pulled. Life might be easy for him, but it isn’t easy for me.
“Thank you for the invitation, Dallas Wilder, but I think you might have just cost me two out of my four jobs. Which I actually need.”
Watching my eyes, he takes one of my hands and pulls off my pink rubber glove.
“These are just completely wrong on you.” Then the other one, tossing them on a nearby table.
“Let’s make sure you never have to wear them again.
” He continues to hold my gaze with his as he gives the back of my hand a slow kiss.
I pull away slowly, but I feel like I’ve been scalded. Holy hell. He’s so warm. And strong. And big. I’m not sure what he’s suggesting. “Most likely I will have to wear them again,” I remind him. “Tomorrow.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
I don’t know what he’s trying to do here, but I know for a fact I’m not going to be able to resist this man and it’s an addictive, out-of-control rush.
“Trust me, you won’t want your job after the day we’re about to have.”
“The day we’re about to have,” I repeat, a little sassily and still breathlessly, because this is crazy.
I don’t trust him. Of course I don’t. And how dare he detonate a bomb in the middle of my pitiful livelihood?
I should refuse whatever it is he’s offering.
But he’s just so unbelievably sexy, it’s messing with my equilibrium.
Something about the absurd degree of it doesn’t seem fair. “And what day are we about to have?”
“A helicopter is waiting. Have you ever seen New Orleans from the air, Amelie Thibodeaux?”
“Um. No, Dallas Wilder, I have not.” I don’t know why we’re using each other’s full names. Maybe we’re challenging each other. I can practically see the sparks zapping between us.
“Now’s your chance.” As if the tall, dark and mysterious wasn’t bad enough, the playful edge behind it that I get the wildest sense is for me and me only makes me feel unnervingly like putty in this man’s hands. And I know for a fact I don’t want to be putty in anyone’s hands.
Except maybe his. They’re freaking big. Sun-tanned and inked. They are without a doubt the most appealing man-hands I have ever seen.
My craving to have them on me swoops in from left field like a herd of stampeding mustangs, wild and uncontrollable.
I’ve already made my decision, but I’m about to cross a rubicon, that’s how it feels. Because once I’ve taken that first step, my life will never be the same, I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Damn it all to hell. Dallas’s slow smirk has become my new Kryptonite, go figure. He’s turning my insides into primordial ooze … of warmth and wetness and a lush, voracious longing.
That cocky dark-eyed sneer is going to be my downfall, I can feel it.
“After the helicopter ride, we’ll get lunch at Maison Rêve. I hear it’s good.”
“It is good.” My dad used to take me to Maison Rêve on my birthdays when I was little. When the budget still allowed for indulgences like that. And when he still remembered my birthdays. It was a long time ago now. “At least it used to be.”
“Then we could do a dinner cruise on a Mississippi riverboat. Have you ever been on the Creole Queen? We can do something else if you’ve done it a thousand times.”
“No. I’ve never been on a river cruise.”
“Well, then, it’s a date, Amelie Thibodeaux. I want you to show me your city.”
If there are a lot of red flags here, I might as well be a feral bull.
My decision was mostly locked into place, but that last line seals the deal.
Not the helicopter, even though I’ve always wondered what it would be like to fly.
Not Maison Rêve, which makes my heart beat in a complicated rhythm because it kicks up both good memories and very un-good memories.
Not the four temp workers Dallas Wilder hired with the casual logistical thoroughness of a man who solves problems for sport.
Not even the hot stranger who can make me come in my dreams. It’s the I want you to show me your city.
Like what he’s interested in, more than anything, is the way I see things.
We click, and I have no vocabulary for how or why. I know almost nothing about him except that right now his dark gaze is feeding the new craving he lit last night and fanned into flames in my dreams.
I know he’s dangerous, mainly because I’m pretty sure I’ll give him anything he wants. I’m also pretty sure I know exactly what he does want.
And it’s the same thing I want. To continue the dream where we left off.
This isn’t going to be a slow burn. I’m an Aries, for God’s sake. I can do abstinence when there’s nothing around that appeals to me, but when something does, I have no control over myself.
Equal footing, he called it. Then why do I feel like my hard-won, well-informed modern feminism and my staunch, icy forcefield have melted into puddles at his feet?
Then again, fuck it. Who says you can’t be divinely feminine and a sexy throw-all-caution-to-the-wind hellcat all at once? Maybe—just maybe—they’re actually two sides of the same coin.
I wouldn’t know. All I can hope for is that he doesn’t break me even more than I’m already broken. I don’t think I’m capable of bouncing back twice.
He offers me his arm.
After the briefest hesitation … I take it.
At least this time, the fall will feel sweeter and more … climactic than anything ever has.